When I could not sleep for cold,I had fire enough in my brain,And builded with roofs of gold,My beautiful castles in Spain! [ Lowell ]

Had we never loved sae kindly, Had we never loved sae blindly, Never met or never parted, We had ne'er been broken-hearted! [ Burns ]

He had a face like a benediction. [ Cervantes ]

Never had ill workman good tools. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

No man can lose what he never had. [ Izaak Walton ]

And silver white the river gleams,As if Diana in her dreams,Had dropt her silver bowUpon the meadows low. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Endymion ]

Believe one who has had experience. [ Virgil ]

A wilful man had need be very wise. [ Proverb ]

And better had they never been born.Who read to doubt, or read to scorn. [ Scott ]

I've often wished that I had clear.For life, six hundred pounds a year,A handsome house to lodge a friend,A river at my garden's end,A terrace walk, and half a roodOf land, set out to plant a wood. [ Swift ]

He who has had experience is afraid. [ Horace ]

Happiest they of human race, To whom God has granted grace To read, to fear, to hope, to pray, To lift the latch and force the way; And better had they ne'er been born, Who read to doubt, or read to scorn. [ Scott ]

I had not so much of man in me,And all my mother came into mine eyesAnd gave me up to tears. [ William Shakespeare ]

When buttercups are blossoming,The poets sang, 'tis best to wed:So all for love we paired in spring -Blanche and I - ere youth had sped. [ E. C. Stedman ]

Lions' skins are not to be had cheap. [ Proverb ]

Where nothing is, nothing can be had. [ Proverb ]

The world will turn when we are earthAs though we had not come nor gone;There was no lack before our birth.When we are gone there will be none. [ Omar Khayyam ]

My birthday! - what a different soundThat word had in my youthful ears;And how each time the day comes round.Less and less white its mark appears. [ Moore ]

'Tis heaven alone that is given away,'Tis only God may be had for the asking. [ Lowell ]

I would the gods had made thee poetical. [ William Shakespeare ]

Had I power, I shouldPour the sweet milk of concord into hell.Uproar the universal peace, confoundAll unity on earth. [ William Shakespeare ]

Mountains interposed Make enemies of nations, who had else Like kindred drops been mingled into one. [ William Cowper ]

Seven cities warred for Homer being dead,Who living had no roof to shroud his head. [ Thos. Heywood ]

My pen is at the bottom of a page,Which being finished, here the story ends;'Tis to be wish'd it had been sooner done,But stories somehow lengthen when begun. [ Byron ]

And there at Venice gaveHis body to that pleasant country's earth,And his pure soul unto his captain Christ,Under whose colours he had fought so long. [ William Shakespeare ]

But true peace can be had only by victory. [ George Hodges ]

He had never kindly heart Nor ever cared to better his own kind, Who first wrote satire with no pity in it. [ Alfred Tennyson ]

The way to bliss lies not on beds of down,And he that had no cross deserves no crown. [ Quarles ]

When better cherries are not to be had.We needs must take the seeming best of bad. [ Daniel ]

For virtue's self may too much zeal be had:The worst of madmen is a saint run mad. [ Pope ]

Oh, that mine adversary had written a book. [ Job ]

I cannot tell what you and other menThink of this life; but for my single self,I had as lief not be as live to beIn awe of such a thing as I myself. [ William Shakespeare ]

If he had twenty in a flock,He would leave but one to go with the cock. [ Proverb ]

If I had had no plough, you had had no corn. [ Proverb ]

O, he's as tediousAs is a tired horse, a railing wife;Worse than a smoky house; I had rather liveWith cheese and garlic in a windmill, far,Than feed on cates, and have him talk to me,In any summer-house in Christendom. [ William Shakespeare ]

Would, no, I thank you, had never been made. [ Proverb ]

Heaven knows, I had no such intent;But that necessity so bowed the state.That I and greatness were compelled to kiss. [ Shakespeare ]

The clock of his age had struck fifty-eight. [ Cellini ]

Had sigh'd to many, though he loved but one. [ Byron ]

If the partridge had the woodcock's thigh,It would be the best bird that ever did fly. [ Proverb ]

To be left aloneAnd face to face with my own crime, had beenJust retribution. [ Longfellow ]

Oh, that this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw and resolve itself into a dew! Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd His canon 'gainst self-slaughter. [ William Shakespeare, Hamlet ]

Now came still evening on, and twilight gray,Had in her sober livery all things clad. [ Milton ]

Alas! today I would give everythingTo see a friend's face, or hear a voiceThat had the slightest tone of comfort in it. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

I don't know. They had bags over their heads. [ Yogi Berra , when asked if the fans that ran naked on the field were men or women ]

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;The soul that rises with us, our life's Star,Hath had elsewhere its setting,And Cometh from afar;Not in entire forgetfulness,And not in utter nakedness.But trailing clouds of glory, do we comeFrom God, who is our home.Heaven lies about us in our infancy.* * * * * *At length the man perceives it die away.And fade into the light of common day. [ Wordsworth ]

Great God, I had rather be A Pagan suckled in some creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn. [ Wordsworth ]

There is music in all things, If men had ears. [ Byron ]

We often weep before we have had time to smile. [ Victor Hugo ]

Assail'd by scandal and the tongue of strife,His only answer was a blameless life;And he that forged, and he that threw the dart,Had each a brother's interest in his heart. [ Cowper ]

Till taught by pain,Men really know not what good water's worth:If you had been in Turkey or in Spain,Or with a famish'd boat's crew had your berth,Or in the desert heard the camel's bell,You'd wish yourself where truth is - in a well. [ Byron ]

My people too were scared with eerie sounds,A footstep, a low throbbing in the walls,A noise of falling weights that never fell.Weird whispers, bells that rang without a hand.Door-handles turn'd when none was at the door.And bolted doors that open'd of themselves;And one betwixt the dark and light had seenHer, bending by the cradle of her babe. [ Tennyson ]

Her cheek like apples which the sun had ruddied. [ Spenser ]

Whatever wants, pleasure and vanity must be had. [ Proverb ]

I should think your tongue had broken its chain! [ Longfellow ]

Let US make no vows, but let us act as if we had. [ Rochepedre ]

Life would be too smooth if it had no rubs in it. [ Proverb ]

And the dream that our mind had sketched in hasteShall others continue, but never complete.For none upon earth can achieve his scheme;The best as the worst are futile here:We wake at the self-same point of the dream -All is here begun, and finished elsewhere. [ Victor Hugo ]

She wept to feel her life so desolate, And wept still more because the world had made it So desolate: yet was the world her all; She loathed it, but she knew it was her all. [ Dr. Walter Smith ]

Here lies Dame Dorothy Peg,Who never had issue except in her leg,So great was her art, so deep was her cunning,That while one leg stood, the other kept running. [ Epitaph ]

Many would be cowards if they had courage enough. [ Proverb ]

If men had not slept, the tares had not been sown. [ Proverb ]

Had doting Priam checked his son's desire,Troy had been bright with fame, and not with fire. [ William Shakespeare ]

Some had rather lose their friend than their jest. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Pride had rather go out of the way than go behind. [ Proverb ]

I had rather my cake burn than you should turn it. [ Proverb ]

He that has but one eye had need look well to that. [ Proverb ]

Love's arms were wreathed about the neck of Hope,And Hope kiss'd Love, and Love drew in her breathIn that close kiss and drank her whispered tales.They say that Love would die when Hope was gone.And Love mourned long, and sorrowed after Hope;At last she sought out Memory, and they trodThe same old paths where Love had walked with Hope,And Memory fed the soul of Love with tears. [ Tennyson ]

Not heaven itself upon the past has power; But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour. [ John Dryden ]

The heart that had never loved was the first atheist. [ L. S. Mercier ]

He had need rise betimes who would please every body. [ Proverb ]

He had need of a long spoon that sups with the devil. [ Proverb ]

Faith, that's as well said as if I had said it myself. [ Swift ]

He had a prince's mind imprisoned in a poor man's purse. [ Fuller ]

God created the coquette as soon as he had made the fool. [ Victor Hugo ]

Since you wronged me, you never had a good thought of me. [ Proverb ]

He had better put his horns in his pocket than blow them. [ Proverb ]

He did me as much good as if he had pissed in my pottage. [ Proverb ]

No man had ever a point of pride but was injurious to him. [ Burke ]

Every dew-drop and rain-drop had a whole heaven within it. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

He looks as though he had sucked his dam through a hurdle. [ Proverb ]

It would be well had we more misers than we have among us. [ Goldsmith ]

I myself had been happy, if I had been unfortunate in time. [ Proverb ]

And, as she looked around, she saw how Death, the consoler,Laying his hand upon many a heart, had healed it forever. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

If marriages are made in heaven, you had few friends there. [ Proverb ]

What the heart has once owned and had, it shall never lose. [ Ward Beecher ]

He who was taught only by himself, had a fool for a master. [ Ben Jonson ]

I had rather be fed with jack-boots than with such stories. [ Proverb ]

Of all men, Adam was the happiest - he had no mother-in-law. [ P. Parfait ]

I had no thought of catching you, when I fished for another. [ Proverb ]

Many would have been worse if their estates had been better. [ Proverb ]

The butcher looked for his knife when he had it in his mouth. [ Proverb ]

Named softly as the household name of one whom God had taken. [ Mrs. Browning ]

The brother had rather see his sister rich, than make her so. [ Proverb ]

Where dainties are not to be had, be content with common fare. [ Proverb ]

He is as hot as if he had a bellyful of wasps and salamanders. [ Proverb ]

If I had not lifted up the stone, you had not found the jewel. [ Proverb ]

He that scoffs at the crooked had need go very upright himself. [ Proverb ]

Not Hercules could have knocked out his brains, for he had none. [ William Shakespeare ]

If I had a dog so good for nothing as you are, I would hang him. [ Proverb ]

Some had rather guess at much, than take pains to hear a little. [ Proverb ]

He had kept the whiteness of his soul, and thus men over him wept. [ Byron ]

God had sifted three kingdoms to find the wheat for this planting. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

He has more wit in his head than Sampson had in both his shoulders. [ Proverb ]

Montesquieu had the style of a genius; Buffon, the genius of style. [ Baron Grimm ]

When she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

Sampson was a strong man, yet could not pay money before he had it. [ Proverb ]

The friar preached against stealing, and had a goose in his sleeve. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

An happy man shall have more cousins, than his father had kinsfolks. [ Proverb ]

No bird ever flew so high but it had to come to the ground for food. [ Dutch Proverb ]

I know him as well as if I had gone through him with a lighted link. [ Proverb ]

Had I children, my utmost endeavors would be to make them musicians. [ Horace Walpole ]

The friar preached against theft, when he had a goose in his sleeve. [ Proverb ]

He that deals with a senseless man had need of a good deal of sense. [ Proverb ]

When I had thatched his house, he would have hurled me from the roof. [ Proverb ]

Folly was condemned to serve as a guide to Love whom she had blinded. [ La Fontaine ]

And when the echoes had ceased, like a sense of pain was the silence. [ Longfellow ]

If he had two ideas in his head, they would fall out with each other. [ Johnson ]

Had God meant me to be different, He would have created me different. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

In all things, but particularly in law, regard is to be had to equity. [ Law ]

No, you didn't wake me up. I had to get up to answer the phone anyway. [ Yogi Berra ]

Man had perished long ago, had it not been for public spirited persons. [ Proverb ]

Hundreds would never have known want if they had not first known waste. [ Spurgeon ]

I had rather ride on an ass that carries me than a horse that throws me. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Had all his hairs been lives, my great revenge had stomach for them all. [ William Shakespeare ]

Speak to living ears as you will wish you had spoken when they are dead.

I had rather have a fool to make me merry than experience to make me sad. [ William Shakespeare ]

If you had had fewer friends and more enemies, you had been a better man. [ Proverb ]

I had rather ask of my fire brown bread than borrow of my neighbour white. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Had you the world on your chess-board you could not fill all to your mind. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Had not God made this world, and death too, it were an insupportable place. [ Carlyle ]

I thought I had given her rope enough, said Petley when he hanged his mare. [ Proverb ]

And yet you had the look of one that promised (threatened) many fine things. [ Horace ]

If I had given four-pence for that advice, I had bought it a groat too dear. [ Proverb ]

I had rather stand the shock of a basilisk than the fury of a merciless pen. [ Sir T. Browne ]

I wish I had an answer to that, because I'm tired of answering that question. [ Yogi Berra ]

You have lost your money; perhaps, if you had kept it, it would have lost you.

One had better forgive a debt, where he cannot recover so much as his charges. [ Proverb ]

Where there is nothing to be had, even the king of France must lose his right. [ Proverb ]

There is something in the shape of harps as though they had been made by music. [ P. J. Bailey ]

How beautiful, if sorrow had not made Sorrow more beautiful than Beauty's self. [ Keats ]

Nature was here so lavish of her store, That she bestowed until she had no more. [ Brown ]

If the mother had not been in the oven, she had never sought her daughter there. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

If you had as little money as manners, you would be the poorest of all your kin. [ Proverb ]

No power of genius has ever yet had the smallest success in explaining existence. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

A woman would be in despair if nature had formed her as fashion makes her appear. [ Mlle. de Lespinasse ]

How can we expect a harvest of thought who have not had a seed-time of character? [ Thoreau ]

Without friends no one would choose to live, even if he had all other good things. [ Aristotle ]

For the qualities of sheer wit and humor. Swift had no superior, ancient or modern. [ Leigh Hunt ]

No man was more foolish when he had not a pen in his hand, or more wise when he had. [ Johnson, of Goldsmith ]

If a man read little, he had need have much cunning to seem to know that he doth not. [ Bacon ]

That one man should die ignorant who had capacity for knowledge, this I call tragedy. [ Carlyle ]

If he had spewed so often as he has lied, he would have brought up his guts long ago. [ Proverb ]

That which had no force in the beginning can gain no strength from the lapse of time. [ Law Maxim ]

Had we not faults of our own we should take less pleasure in observing those of others. [ Rochefoucauld ]

It would be easier to endow a fool with intellect than to persuade him that he had none. [ Babinet ]

When the intoxication of love has passed, we laugh at the perfections it had discovered. [ Ninon de Lenclos ]

Raphael would have been a great painter even if he had come into the world without hands. [ Lessing ]

For my own part, I had rather be old only a short time than be old before I really am so. [ Cicero ]

Now had night measured, with her shadowy cone, half-way up hill this vast sublunar vault. [ Milton ]

A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. [ Leonard Nimoy, Tweeted Feb. 22, 2015, five days before his death ]

They had finished her own crown in glory, and she couldn't stay away from the coronation. [ Gray ]

If we had no defects, we should not take so much pleasure in discovering those of others. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

Envy is so shameful and cowardly a passion, that nobody ever had the confidence to own it. [ Proverb ]

For my own private satisfaction, I had rather be master of my own time than wear a diadem. [ Bishop Berkeley ]

If Cleopatra's nose had been shorter, the face of the whole world would have been changed. [ Pascal ]

Two heads are better than one; quoth the woman, when she had her dog with her to the market. [ Proverb ]

I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep both Dracula and Superman away. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

Experience is a jewel, and it had need be so, for it is often purchased at an infinite rate. [ William Shakespeare ]

That there should one man die ignorant who had capacity for knowledge, this I call a tragedy. [ Carlyle ]

Superior strength is found in the long-run to lie with those who had the right on their side. [ Froude ]

If the tongue had not been formed for articulation, man would still be a beast in the forest. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Nature had made occupation a necessity; society makes it a duty; habit may make it a pleasure. [ Capelle ]

There are many women who never have had one intrigue; but there are few who have had only one. [ Rochefoucauld ]

God only opened His hand to give flight to a thought that He had held imprisoned from eternity. [ Timothy Titcomb ]

I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream - past the wit of man to say what dream it was. [ William Shakespeare ]

All her excellences stand in her so silently as if they had stolen upon her without her knowledge. [ Sir T. Overbury ]

I have never had a policy. I have simply tried to do what seemed best each day, as each day came. [ Lincoln ]

The old woman would never have looked for her daughter in the oven, had she not been there herself. [ Proverb ]

We sometimes meet an original gentleman, who, if manners had not existed, would have invented them. [ Emerson ]

Had I succeeded well, I had been reckoned amongst the wise; so ready are we to judge from the event. [ Euripides ]

How often events, by chance and unexpectedly, come to pass, which you had not dared even to hope for! [ Terence ]

This man (Chesterfield) I thought had been a lord among wits; but I find he is only a wit among lords. [ Samuel Johnson ]

Had I not sinned, what had there been for thee to pardon? My fate has given thee the matter for mercy. [ Ovid ]

Friends should be weighed, not told; who boasts to have won a multitude of friends, has never had one. [ Coleridge ]

The world is full of love and pity. Had there been less suffering, there would have been less kindness. [ Thackeray ]

He that would be singular in his apparel had need of something superlative to balance that affectation. [ Feltham ]

He who comes up to his own idea of greatness must always have had a very low standard of it in his mind. [ Hazlitt ]

Had Caesar or Cromwell changed countries, the one might have been a sergeant and the other an exciseman. [ Goldsmith ]

I heard that God had called your mother home to heaven. It will seem more than ever like home to you now. [ Babcock ]

Jess would have been an omnivorous reader of books had it not been her conviction that reading was idling. [ George Eliot ]

Wit is, in general, the finest sense in the world. I had lived long before I discovered that wit was truth. [ Dr. Richard Porson ]

No man has a claim to credit upon his own word, when better evidence, if he had it, may be easily produced. [ Johnson ]

I always had an aversion to your apostles of freedom; each but sought for himself freedom to do what he liked. [ Goethe ]

There was never a nation great until it came to the knowledge that it had nowhere in the world to go for help. [ Charles Dudley Warner ]

Great minds had rather deserve contemporaneous applause without obtaining it, than obtain without deserving it. [ Colton ]

Louis XVI knew only how to love, pardon, and die; had he known how to punish, he would have known how to reign. [ Tilly ]

Give me a chance, says Stupid, and I will show you. Ten to one he has had his chance already, and neglected it. [ Haliburton ]

He had a head which statuaries loved to copy, and a foot the deformity of which the beggars in the streets mimicked. [ Macaulay ]

I have often had occasion to remark the fortitude with which women sustain the most overwhelming reverses of fortune. [ Washington Irving ]

I have tried merely to express what I had to say with as much simplicity and as little affectation as I could command. [ James A. Froude, The Art of Authorship, 1891 ]

If you had told Sycorax that her son Caliban was as handsome as Apollo, she would have been pleased, witch as she was. [ Thackeray ]

Her deep blue eyes smile constantly, as if they had by fitness won the secret of a happy dream she does not care to speak. [ Mrs. Browning ]

There is but one solid basis of happiness, and that is the reasonable hope of a happy futurity. This may be had everywhere. [ Johnson ]

Repentance is for pale faces; they killed Christ, the good man. If Christ had come to red men, we would not have killed him. [ Red Jacket ]

The greatest pleasure in life is that of reading while we are young. I have had as much of this pleasure perhaps as any one. [ Hazlitt ]

Though you had the wisdom of Newton or the wit of Swift, garrulousness would lower you in the eyes of your fellow-creatures. [ Burns ]

Rhyme that had no inward necessity to be rhymed; it ought to have told us plainly, without any jingle, what it was aiming at. [ Carlyle ]

The highest conceptions of the sages, who, in order to arrive at them, had to live many days, have become the milk for babes. [ Ballanche ]

Wine leads to folly, making even the wise to laugh immoderately, to dance, and to utter what had better have been kept silent. [ Homer ]

Troubled blood through his pale face was seen to come and go, with tidings from his heart, as it a running messenger had been. [ Spenser ]

It does not take twenty years for men to change their opinions of things which had seemed to them the truest, and most certain. [ La Bruyere ]

Not because of any extraordinary talents did he succeed, but because he had a capacity on a level for business and not above it. [ Tacitus ]

Houses are built to live in more than to look on; therefore let use be preferred before uniformity, except where both may be had. [ Bacon ]

Of many imagined blessings it may be doubted whether he that wants or possesses them had more reason to be satisfied with his lot. [ Dr. Johnson ]

Her eyes, like marigolds, had sheathed their light, and, canopied in darkness, sweetly lay, till they might open to adorn the day. [ William Shakespeare ]

I had rather believe all the fables in the Legends and the Talmud and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a mind. [ Bacon ]

A thousand ages were blank if books had not evoked their ghosts, and kept their pale, unbodied shade, to warn us from fleshless hps. [ Bulwer ]

I do not number my borrowings; I weigh them, and had I designed to raise their value by their number, I had made them twice as many. [ Montaigne ]

I knew a wise man who had it for a by-word when he saw men hasten to a conclusion: Stay a little, that we may make an end the sooner. [ Bacon ]

No character was ever rightly understood until it had been first regarded with a certain feeling, not of tolerance only, but of sympathy. [ Carlyle ]

Wise were the kings who never chose a friend till with full cups they had unmasked his soul, and seen the bottom of his deepest thoughts. [ Horace ]

If you had a school for professional fireworks people, I don't think you could cover fuses in just one class. It's just too rich a subject. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

Psychical pain is more easily borne than physical: and if I had my choice between a bad conscience and a bad tooth, I should choose the former. [ Heinrich Heine ]

A certain tendency to insanity has always attended the opening of the religious sense in men, as if they had been blasted with excess of light. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Never hold any one by the button or the hand in order to be heard out; for if people are unwilling to hear you, you had better hold your tongue. [ Chesterfield ]

The most difficult thing in all works of art is to make that which has been most highly elaborated appear as if it had not been elaborated at all. [ Winkelmann ]

The oppression of any people for opinion's sake has rarely had any other effect than to fix those opinions deeper, and render them more important. [ Hosea Ballou ]

The good things of life are not to be had singly, but come to us with a mixture; like a school-boy's holiday, with a task affixed to the tail of it. [ Charles Lamb ]

Mr. Fearing had, I think, a slough of despond in his mind, a slough that he carried everywhere with him, or else he could never have been as he was. [ John Bunyan ]

If you do not wish a man to do a thing, you had better get him to talk about it; for the more men talk, the more likely they are to do nothing else. [ Carlyle ]

Tom hinted at his dislike at some trifle his mistress had said; she asked him how he would talk to her after marriage if he talked at this rate before. [ Addison ]

Cullen whispered in his last moments: I wish I had the power of writing or speaking, for then I would describe to you how pleasant a thing it is to die. [ Dr. Derby ]

His last day places man in the same state as he was before he was born; nor after death has the body or soul any more feeling than they had before birth. [ Pliny the Elder ]

The stroke that comes transmitted through a whole galaxy of elastic balls, is it less a stroke than if the last ball only had been struck and sent flying? [ Carlyle ]

Had he not long read the heart's hushed secret in the soft, dark eye, lighted at his approach, and on the cheek, coloring all crimson at his lightest look? [ L. E. Landon ]

Cheerfulness is the daughter of employment; and I have known a man come home in high spirits from a funeral, merely because he has had the management of it. [ Dr. Horne ]

There are two things which ought to teach us to think but meanly of human glory; the very best have had their calumniators, the very worst their panegyrists. [ Colton ]

There are a sort of friends, who in your poverty do nothing but torment and taunt you with accounts of what you might have been had you followed their advice. [ Zimmerman ]

Women live only in the emotion that love gives. An old lady confessed that she had loved much,when young: Ah! she exclaimed, the exquisite pain of those days! [ A. Houssaye ]

I never could believe that Providence had sent a few men into this world, ready booted and spurred to ride, and millions ready saddled and bridled to be ridden. [ Richard Rumbold ]

He that waits for repentance waits for that which cannot be had as long as it is waited for. It is absurd for a man to wait for that which he himself has to do. [ Nevins ]

The past but lives in words; a thousand ages were blank if books had not evoked their ghosts, and kept the pale, unbodied shades to warn us from fleshless lips. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]

Which of us that is thirty years old has not had his Pompeii? Deep under ashes lie life, youth, the careless sports, the pleasures and passions, the darling joy. [ William M. Thackeray ]

Had religion been a mere chimaera, it would long ago have been extinct; were it susceptible of a definite formula, that formula would long ago have been discovered. [ Renan ]

When I behold the passion for ornamentation, and the corresponding power, I feel as if women had so far shown what they are bad for, rather than what they are good for. [ Julia Ward Howe ]

A face that had a story to tell. How different are faces in this particular! Some of them speak not; they are books in which not a line is written, save perhaps a date. [ Longfellow ]

Knowledge being to be had only of visible and certain truth, error is not a fault of our knowledge, but a mistake of our judgment, giving assent to that which is not true. [ John Locke ]

Reputation is rarely proportioned, to virtue. We have seen a thousand people esteemed, either for the merit, they had not yet attained or for that they no longer possessed. [ St. Evremond ]

Had he unjustly fallen, your name had then been stained to latest times with foul reproach; and what more dreadful, more to be abhorred, than to be known with infamy forever? [ Paterson ]

High birth is a thing which I never knew any one to disparage except those who had it not; and I never knew any one to make a boast of it who had anything else to be proud of. [ Bishop Warburton ]

I hold a doctrine, to which I owe not much, indeed, but all the little I ever had, namely, that with ordinary talent and extraordinary perseverance, all things are attainable. [ Sir T. F. Buxton ]

Flowers so strictly belong to youth, that we adult men soon come to feel that their beautiful generations concern not us; we have had our day; now let the children have theirs. [ R. W. Emerson ]

The first time I read an excellent book, it is to me just as if I had gained a new friend. When I read over a book I have perused before, it resembles the meeting with an old one. [ Goldsmith ]

Milton almost requires a solemn service of music to be played before you enter upon him. But he brings his music, to which who listen had need bring docile thoughts and purged ears. [ Lamb ]

America has furnished to the world the character of Washington! And if our American institutions had done nothing else, that alone would have entitled them to the respect of mankind. [ Daniel Webster ]

Even though he was an enemy of mine, I had to admit that what he had accomplished was a brilliant piece of strategy. First, he punched me, then he kicked me, then he punched me again. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

When I beheld human affairs involved in such dense darkness, the guilty exulting in their prosperity, and pious men suffering wrong, what religion I had began to reel backward and fall. [ Claudius, Claudian ]

He who kindly shows the way to one who has gone astray, acts as though he had lighted another's lamp from his own, which both gives light to the other and continues to shine for himself. [ Cicero ]

He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in phials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement seasons. [ Swift ]

I met a brother who, describing a friend of his, said he was like a man who had dropped a bottle and broken it and put all the pieces in his bosom where they were cutting him perpetually. [ H. W. Beecher ]

Gravity, with all its pretensions, was no better, but often worse, than what a French wit had long ago defined it, viz., a mysterious carriage of the body to cover the defects of the mind. [ Sterne ]

To be as good as our fathers, Me must be better. Imitation is not discipleship. When some one sent a cracked plate to China to have a set made, every piece in the new set had a crack in it. [ Wendell Phillips ]

He that had never seen a river imagined the first he met with to be the sea; and the greatest things that have fallen within our knowledge we conclude the extremes that nature makes of the kind. [ Montaigne ]

I think someone should have had the decency to tell me the luncheon was free. To make someone run out with potato salad in his hand, pretending he's throwing up, is not what I call hospitality. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

Had I children, my utmost endeavors would be to make them musicians. Considering I have no ear, nor even thought of music, the preference seems odd, and yet it is embraced on frequent reflection. [ H. Walpole ]

D'Alembert tells us that Voltaire had always lying on his table the Petit Careme of Massillon and the Tragedies of Racine; the former to fix his taste in prose composition, and the latter in poetry. [ Dugald Stewart ]

Such a noise arose as the shroud? make at sea in a stiff tempest, as loud and to as many tunes, - hats, cloaks, doublets, I think, flew up; and had their faces been loose, this day they had been lost. [ William Shakespeare ]

I wish everybody had the drive he (Joe DiMaggio) had. He never did anything wrong on the field. I'd never seen him dive for a ball, everything was a chest high catch, and he never walked off the field. [ Yogi Berra ]

The sun had not risen, but the vault of heaven was rich with the winning softness that brings and shuts the day, while the whole air was filled with the carols of birds, the hymns of the feathered tribe. [ James Fenimore Cooper ]

The celebrated Boerhaave, who had many enemies, used to say that he never thought it necessary to repeat their calumnies. They are sparks, said he, which, if you do not blow them, will go out of themselves. [ Disraeli ]

All our opinions, sentiments, principles, prejudices, religious beliefs, are really but the result of birthplace: how different would they be, had we been born and reared at the antipodes of our respective lands. [ De Finod ]

No man is so foolish but he may give another good counsel sometimes, and no man so wise but he may easily err, if he takes no other counsel than his own. He that was taught only by himself had a fool for a master. [ Ben Jonson ]

The sordid meal of the Cynics contributed neither to their tranquillity nor to their modesty. Pride went with Diogenes into his tub; and there he had the presumption to command Alexander the haughtiest of all men. [ Henry Home ]

The masters painted for joy, and knew not that virtue had gone out of them. They could not paint the like in cold blood. The masters of English lyric wrote their songs so. It was a fine efflorescence of fine powers. [ Emerson ]

I could write down twenty cases, wherein I wished God had done otherwise than He did; but which I now see, had I had my own will, would have led to extensive mischief. The life of a Christian is a life of paradoxes. [ Cecil ]

To know by rote is no knowledge: it is only a retention of what is intrusted to the memory. That which a man truly knows may be disposed of without regard to the author, or reference to the book from whence he had it. [ Montaigne ]

As those that pull down private houses adjoining to the temples of the gods, prop up such parts as are continguous to them; so, in undermining bashfulness, due regard is to be had to adjacent modesty, good-nature and humanity. [ Plutarch ]

He that has complex ideas, without particular names for them, would be in no better case than a book-seller who had volumes that lay unbound and without titles, which he could make known to others only by showing the loose sheets. [ Locke ]

I had fifteen years' apprenticeship on the press of New York, writing editorials upon every conceivable subject, often at a few minutes notice, acquiring in this way rapid thought and rapid expression. ... The proof of genius lies in continuity. [ Amelia E. Barr, The Art of Authorship, 1891 ]

Without earnestness no man is ever great, or does really great things. He may be the cleverest of men; he may be brilliant, entertaining, popular; but he will want weight. No soulmoving picture was ever painted that had not in it depth of shadow. [ Peter Bayne ]

Let him speak of his own deeds, and not of those of his forefathers. High birth is mere accident, and not a virtue; for if reason had controlled birth, and given empire only to the worthy, perhaps Arbaces would have been Xerxes, and Xerxes Arbaces. [ Metastasio ]

Much of what is great, and to all men beneficial, has been wrought by those who neither intended nor knew the good they did; and many mighty harmonies have been discoursed by instruments that had been dumb and discordant but that God knew their stops. [ John Ruskin ]

As the mind of Johnson was robust, but neither nimble nor graceful, so his style was void of all grace and ease, and, being the most unlike of all styles to the natural effusion of a cultivated mind, had the least pretension to the praise of eloquence. [ Sir J. Mackintosh ]

How many who, after having achieved fame and fortune, recall with regret the time when - ascending the hills of life in the sun of their twentieth year - they had nothing but courage, which is the virtue of the young, and hope, which is the treasure of the poor! [ H. Murger ]

To write a genuine familiar or truly English style is to write as anyone would speak in common conversation, who had a thorough command and choice of words, or who could discourse with ease, force, and perspicuity, setting aside all pedantic and oratorical flourishes. [ Hazlitt ]

The young man may applaud the negligent and pusillanimous instructor; but when that man, no longer young, suffers the result of that neglect and pusillanimity, it is well if a better spirit had taught him to mention the name of that instructor without bitter execration. [ F. Wayland ]

To men addicted to delights, business is an interruption; to such as are cold to delights, business is an entertainment. For which reason it was said to one who commended a dull man for his application: No thanks to him; if he had no business, he would have nothing to do. [ Steele ]

A blushing young damsel of 109 has just died at Mallow, Ireland. She had been an ardent smoker of twist tobacco for 81 years, and finally died in the bloom of her youth. To make matters worse, she was an orphan. Those who do not wish to die young should make a note of this. [ Tobacco Jokes For Smoking Folks, 1888 ]

Heaven may have happiness as utterly unknown to us as the gift of perfect vision would be to a man born blind. If we consider the inlets of pleasure from five senses only, we may be sure that the same Being who created us could have given us five hundred, if He had pleased. [ Colton ]

If all fools had baubles* we should want fuel. (*The fool or jester carried in his hand a wooden sceptre called a bauble. It was a short stick ornamented at the end with the figure of a fool's head, or with that of a puppet or doll. Jesters were still retained in Herbert's day.) [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Oh! woe to him who first had the cruelty to ridicule the name of old maid, a name which recalls so many sorrowful deceptions, so many sufferings, so much destitution! Woe to him who finds a target for his sarcasm in an involuntary misfortune, and who crowns white hair with thorns! [ E. Souvestre ]

Of all studies, the most delightful and the most useful is biography. The seeds of great events lie near the surface; historians delve too deep for them. No history was ever true. Lives I have read which, if they were not, had the appearance, the interest, and the utility of truth. [ Landor ]

Even the grasses in exposed fields were bung with innumerable diamond pendants, which jingled merrily when brushed by the foot of the traveler. * * * It was as if some superincumbent stratum of the earth had been removed in the night, exposing to light a bed of untarnished crystals. [ Henry D. Thoreau ]

Mrs. Crupp had indignantly assured him that there wasn't room to swing a cat there; but as Mr. Dick justly observed to me, sitting down on the foot of the bed, nursing his leg, You know, Trotwood, I don't want to swing a cat. I never do swing a cat. Therefore what does that signify to me! [ Charles Dickens ]

Thou hast most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm in erecting a grammar school; and whereas, before, our forefathers had no other books but the score and the tally, thou hast caused printing to be used, and contrary to the king, his crown and dignity, thou hast built a paper-mill. [ William Shakespeare ]

There are circumstances of peculiar difficulty and danger, where a mediocrity of talent is the most fatal quantum that a man can possibly possess. Had Charles the First and Louis the Sixteenth been more wise or more weak, more firm or more yielding, in either case they had both of them saved their heads. [ Colton ]

Did you ever hear of a man who had striven all his life faithfully and singly towards an object, and in no measure obtained it? If a man constantly aspires, is he not elevated? Did ever a man try heroism, magnanimity, truth, sincerity, and find that there was no advantage in them, - that it was a vain endeavor? [ Thoreau ]

Phaeton was his father's heir; born to attain the highest fortune without earning it; he had built no sun-chariot (could not build the simplest wheel-barrow), but could and would insist on driving one; and so broke his own stiff neck, sent gig and horses spinning through infinite space, and set the universe on fire. [ Carlyle ]

What is our death but a night's sleep? For as through sleep all weariness and faintness pass away and cease, and the powers of the spirit come back again, so that in the morning we arise fresh and strong and joyous; so at the Last Day we shall rise again as if we had only slept a night, and shall be fresh and strong. [ Martin Luther ]

I can still recall old Mister Barnslow getting out every morning and nailing a fresh load of tadpoles to the old board of his. Then he'd spin it round and round, like a wheel of fortune, and no matter where it stopped he'd yell out, Tadpoles! Tadpoles is a winner! We all thought he was crazy. But then we had some growing up to do. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

Alchemy may be compared to the man who told his sons he had left them gold buried somewhere in his vineyard; where they by digging found no gold, but by turning up the mould, about the roots of their vines, procured a plentiful vintage. So the search and endeavors to make gold have brought many useful inventions and instructive experiments to light. [ Bacon ]

The very essence of gravity was design, and, consequently, deceit; it was a taught trick to gain credit of the world for more sense and knowledge than a man was worth; and that with all its pretensions it was no better, but often worse, than what a French wit had long ago defined it - a mysterious carriage of the body to cover the defects of the mind. [ Sterne ]

Oceans of ink, reams of paper, and disputes infinite, might have been spared, if wranglers had avoided lighting the torch of strife at the wrong end; since a tenth part of the pains expended in attempting to prove the why, the where, and the when, certain events have happened, would have been more than sufficient to prove that they never happened at all. [ Colton ]

Plutarch tells us of an idle and effeminate Etrurian who found fault with the manner in which Themistocles had conducted a recent campaign. What, said the hero in reply, have you, too, something to say about war, who are like the fish that has a sword, but no heart? He is always the severest censor on the merits of others who has the least worth of his own. [ E. L. Magoon ]

I never had the courage to talk across a long, narrow room I should be at the end of the room facing all the audience. If I attempt to talk across a room I find myself turning this way and that, and thus at alternate periods I have part of the audience behind me. You ought never to have any part of the audience behind you; you never can tell what they are going to do. [ Mark Twain, from his speech Courage ]

There was a proposition in a township there to discontinue public schools because they were too expensive. An old farmer spoke up and said if they stopped the schools they would not save anything, because every time a school was closed a jail had to be built. It's like feeding a dog on his own tail. He'll never get fat. I believe it is better to support schools than jails. [ Mark Twain, "Public Education Association" Speech ]

I have so great a contempt and detestation for meanness, that I could sooner make a friend of one who had committed murder, than of a person who could be capable, in any instance, of the former vice. Under meanness, I comprehend dishonesty; under dishonesty, ingratitude; under ingratitude, irreligion; and under this latter, every species of vice and immorality in human nature. [ Sterne ]

There is nothing so remote from vanity as true genius. It is almost as natural for those who are endowed with the highest powers of the human mind to produce the miracles of art, as for other men to breathe or move. Correggio, who is said to have produced some of his divinest works almost without having seen a picture, probably did not know that he had done anything extraordinary. [ Hazlitt ]

When the great Kepler had at length discovered the harmonic laws that regulate the motions of the heavenly bodies, he exclaimed: Whether my discoveries will be read by posterity or by my contemporaries is a matter that concerns them more than me. I may well be contented to wait one century for a reader, when God Himself, during so many thousand years, has waited for an observer like myself. [ Macaulay ]

Since I have known God in a saving manner, painting, poetry, and music have had charms unknown to me before. I have received what I suppose is a taste for them, or religion has refined my mind and made it susceptible of impressions from the sublime and beautiful. O, how religion secures the heightened enjoyment of those pleasures which keep so many from God, by their becoming a source of pride! [ Henry Martyn ]

What a lesson, indeed, is all history and all life to the folly and fruitlessness of pride! The Egyptian kings had their embalmed bodies preserved in massive pyramids, to obtain an earthly immortality. In the seventeenth century they were sold as quack medicines, and now they are burnt for fuel! The Egyptian mummies, which Cambyses or time hath spared, avarice now consumeth. Mummy is become merchandise. [ Whipple ]

Candlesticks and incense not being portable into the maintop, the sailor perceives these decorations to be, on the whole, inessential to a maintop mass. Sails must be set and cables bent, be it never so strict a saint's day; and it is found that no harm comes of it. Absolution on a lee-shore must be had of the breakers, it appears, if at all; and they give plenary and brief without listening to confession. [ Ruskin ]

Mr. Johnson had never, by his own account, been a close student, and used to advise young people never to be without a book in their pocket, to be read at bye-times, when they had nothing else to do. It has been by that means, said he to a boy at our house one day, that all my knowledge has been gained, except what I have picked up by running about the world with my wits ready to observe, and my tongue ready to talk. [ Mrs. Piozzi ]

Frivolous curiosity about trifles, and laborious attentions to little objects which neither require nor deserve a moment's thought, lower a man, who from thence is thought (and not unjustly) incapable of greater matters. Cardinal de Retz very sagaciously marked out Cardinal Chigi for a little mind, from the moment he told him that he had wrote three years with the same pen, and that it was an excellent good one still. [ Chesterfield ]

Columbus died in utter ignorance of the true nature of his discovery. He supposed he had found India, but never knew how strangely God had used him. So God piloted the fleet. The great discoverer, with all his heroic virtues, did not know whither he went. He sailed for the back door of Asia, and landed at the front door of America, and knew it not. He never settled the continent. Thus far and no farther, said the Lord. His providence was over all. [ David James Burrell ]

There is a story of some mountains of salt in Cumana, which never diminished, though carried away in much abundance by merchants; but when once they were monopolized to the benefit of a private purse, then the salt decreased, till afterward all were allowed to take of it, when it had a new access and increase. The truth of this story may be uncertain, but the application is true; he that envies others the use of his gifts decays then, but he thrives most that is most diffusive. [ Spencer ]

We have no permanent habits until we are forty. Then they begin to harden, presently they petrify, then business begins. Since forty I have been regular about going to bed and getting up - and that is one of the main things. I have made it a rule to go to bed when there wasn't anybody left to sit up with; and I have made it a rule to get up when I had to. This has resulted in an unswerving regularity of irregularity. It has saved me sound, but it would injure another person. [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]

It is good for any man to be alone with nature and himself, or with a friend who knows when silence is more sociable than talk, In the wilderness alone, there where nature worships God. It is well to be in places where man is little and God is great, where what he sees all around him has the same look as it had a thousand years ago, and will have the same, in all likelihood, when he has been a thousand years in his grave. It abates and rectifies a man, if he is worth the process. [ Sydney Smith ]

Out of the ashes of misanthropy benevolence rises again; we find many virtues where we had imagined all was vice, many acts of disinterested friendship where we had fancied all was calculation and fraud - and so gradually from the two extremes we pass to the proper medium; and, feeling that no human being is wholly good or wholly base, we learn that true knowledge of mankind which induces us to expect little and forgive much. The world cures alike the optimist and the misanthrope. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]

It is to be hoped that, with all the modern improvements, a mode will be discovered of getting rid of bores: for it is too bad that a poor wretch can be punished for stealing your pocket handkerchief or gloves, and that no punishment can be inflicted on those who steal your time, and with it your temper and patience, as well as the bright thoughts that might have entered into your mind (like the Irishman who lost the fortune before he had got it), but were frightened away by the bore. [ Byron ]

When the dusk of evening had come on, and not a sound disturbed the sacred stillness of the place, - when the bright moon poured in her light on tomb and monument, on pillar, wall, and arch, and most of all (it seemed to them) upon her quiet grave, - in that calm time, when all outward things and inward thoughts teem with assurances of immortality, and worldly hopes and fears are humbled in the dust before them, - then, with tranquil and submissive hearts they turned away, and left the child with God. [ Dickens ]

I put myself, my experiences, my observations, my heart and soul into my work. I press my soul upon the white paper. The writer who does this may have any style, he or she will find the hearts of their readers. Writing a book involves, not a waste, but a great expenditure of vital force. Yet I can assure you I have written the last lines of most of my stories with tears. The characters of my own creation had become dear to me. I could not bear to bid them good-bye and send them away from me into the wide world. [ Amelia E. Barr, The Art of Authorship, 1891 ]

When we turn away from some duty or some fellow-creature, saying that our hearts are too sick and sore with some great yearning of our own, we may often sever the line on which a Divine message was coming to us. We shut out the man, and we shut out the angel who had sent him on to open the door . . . There is a plan working in our lives; and if we keep our hearts quiet and our eyes open, it all works together; and, if we don't, it all fights together, and goes on fighting till it comes right, somehow, somewhere. [ Annie Keary ]

Those who worship gold in a world so corrupt as this we live in have at least one thing to plead in defense of their idolatry - the power of their idol. It is true that, like other idols, it can neither move, see, hear, feel, nor understand; but, unlike other idols, it has often communicated all these powers to those who had them not, and annihilated them in those who had. This idol can boast of two peculiarities; it is worshipped in all climates, without a single temple, and by all classes, without a single hypocrite. [ Colton ]

The importance of the romantic element does not rest upon conjecture. Pleasing testimonies abound. Hannah More traced her earliest impressions of virtue to works of fiction; and Adam Clarke gives a list of tales that won his boyish admiration. Books of entertainment led him to believe in a spiritual world; and he felt sure of having been a coward, but for romances. He declared that he had learned more of his duty to God, his neighbor and himself from Robinson Crusoe than from all the books, except the Bible, that were known to his youth. [ Willmott ]

My friends, if you had but the power of looking into the future you might see that great things may come of little things. There is the great ocean, holding the navies of the world, which comes from little drops of water no larger than a woman's tears. There are the great constellations in the sky, made up of little bits of stars. Oh, if you could consider his future you might see that he might become the greatest poet of the universe, the greatest warrior the world has ever known, greater than Caesar, than Hannibal, than--er--er" (turning to the father) - What's his name? The father hesitated, then whispered back: His name? Well, his name is Mary Ann. [ Mark Twain, Educations and Citizenship ]

My method has been simply this - to think well on the subject which I had to deal with and when thoroughly impressed with it and acquainted with it in all its details, to write away without stopping to choose a word, leaving a blank where I was at a loss for it; to express myself as simply as possible in vernacular English, and afterwards to go through what I had written, striking out all redundancies, and substituting, when possible, simpler and more English words for those I might have written. I found that by following this method I could generally reduce very considerably in length what I had put on paper without sacrificing anything of importance or rendering myself less intelligible. [ Sir Austen Henry Layard, The Art of Authorship, 1891 ]

Since I was seven years old I have seldom take, a dose of medicine, and have still seldomer needed one. But up to seven I lived exclusively on allopathic medicines. Not that I needed them, for I don't think I did; it was for economy; my father took a drug-store for a debt, and it made cod-liver oil cheaper than the other breakfast foods. We had nine barrels of it, and it lasted me seven years. Then I was weaned. The rest of the family had to get along with rhubarb and ipecac and such things, because I was the pet. I was the first Standard Oil Trust. I had it all. By the time the drugstore was exhausted my health was established, and there has never been much the matter with me since. [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]

He must have an artist's eye for color and form who can arrange a hundred flowers as tastefully, in any other way, as by strolling through a garden, and picking here one and there one, and adding them to the bouquet in the accidental order in which they chance to come. Thus we see every summer day the fair lady coming in from the breezy side hill with gorgeous colors and most witching effects. If only she could be changed to alabaster, was ever a finer show of flowers in so fine a vase? But instead of allowing the flowers to remain as they were gathered, they are laid upon the table, divided, rearranged on some principle of taste, I know not what, but never again have that charming naturalness and grace which they first had. [ Beecher ]

I was walking in the street, a beggar stopped me, — a frail old man. His inflamed, tearful eyes, blue lips, rough rags, disgusting sores . . . oh, how horribly poverty had disfigured the unhappy creature! He stretched out to me his red, swollen, filthy hand. He groaned and whimpered for alms. I felt in all my pockets. No purse, watch, or handkerchief did I find. I had left them all at home. The beggar waited and his out-stretched hand twitched and trembled slightly. Embarrassed and confused, I seized his dirty hand and pressed it. Don't be vexed with me, brother; I have nothing with me, brother. The beggar raised his bloodshot eyes to mine; his blue lips smiled, and he returned the pressure of my chilled fingers. Never mind, brother, stammered he; thank you for this — this, too, was a gift, brother. I felt that I, too, had received a gift from my brother. [ Ivan Tourgueneff ]

In the matter of diet - which is another main thing - I have been persistently strict in sticking to the things which didn't agree with me until one or the other of us got the best of it. Until lately I got the best of it myself. But last spring I stopped frolicking with mince-pie after midnight; up to then I had always believed it wasn't loaded. For thirty years I have taken coffee and bread at eight in the morning, and no bite nor sup until seven-thirty in the evening. Eleven hours. That is all right for me, and is wholesome, because I have never had a headache in my life, but headachy people would not reach seventy comfortably by that road, and they would be foolish to try it. And I wish to urge upon you this - which I think is wisdom - that if you find you can't make seventy by any but an uncomfortable road, don't you go. When they take off the Pullman and retire you to the rancid smoker, put on your things, count your checks, and get out at the first way station where there's a cemetery. [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]

Morals are an acquirement - like music, like a foreign language, like piety, poker, paralysis - no man is born with them. I wasn't myself, I started poor. I hadn't a single moral. There is hardly a man in this house that is poorer than I was then. Yes, I started like that - the world before me, not a moral in the slot. Not even an insurance moral. I can remember the first one I ever got. I can remember the landscape, the weather, the - I can remember how everything looked. It was an old moral, an old second-hand moral, all out of repair, and didn't fit, anyway. But if you are careful with a thing like that, and keep it in a dry place, and save it for processions, and Chautauquas, and World's Fairs, and so on, and disinfect it now and then, and give it a fresh coat of whitewash once in a while, you will be surprised to see how well she will last and how long she will keep sweet, or at least inoffensive. When I got that mouldy old moral, she had stopped growing, because she hadn't any exercise; but I worked her hard, I worked her Sundays and all. Under this cultivation she waxed in might and stature beyond belief, and served me well and was my pride and joy for sixty-three years; then she got to associating with insurance presidents, and lost flesh and character, and was a sorrow to look at and no longer competent for business. She was a great loss to me. Yet not all loss. I sold her - ah, pathetic skeleton, as she was - I sold her to Leopold, the pirate King of Belgium; he sold her to our Metropolitan Museum, and it was very glad to get her, for without a rag on, she stands 57 feet long and 16 feet high, and they think she's a brontosaur. Well, she looks it. They believe it will take nineteen geological periods to breed her match. [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]

Link To This Page

If you have a website and feel that a link to this page would fit in nicely with the content of your pages, please feel free to link to this page. Copy and paste the following html into your webpage. (You may modify the link text to suit your needs).

This site uses cookies to deliver our services and to show you relevant ads. By using our site, you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy. You can manage your privacy settings on the policy pages. Your use of services at Litscape.com is subject to these policies and terms of service.